I am a primatologist who spends twelve hours most days in the company of a thirteen year old chimpanzee named Bow. I am also an editor with Inverted-A Press.
For a long time, it seemed the cockatiels would end their season with only a single egg. And they also seemed quite neglectful of that one egg, going off to do other things together, such as eating, grooming and mating. I thought that probably nothing would come of it, but I kept the nest there, and every now and then Queen seemed to have the nesting urge.
Actually, she sat there the longest, looking tired and irritable and a little stricken, when she was trying to lay another egg. I only understood that in retrospect.
It took a very long time for that second egg to finally emerge.
The third egg arrived promptly soon thereafter. It was only just last night.
Both cockatiels are taking turns sitting on the eggs now, with Queen taking her shift in the evening and King coming on duty in the morning, when the coffee is a-brewing. They both look identical to me. The only way I can tell the difference is by the way they behave. Queen is shy and nervous. King is outgoing and talkative. I think he actually takes pride in showing me the eggs, before he gently pushes them into place underneath him with his halfway open beak.
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The next thing I did after Bow discovered rap music was to get him a cheap tablet at Wal*Mart. I wanted it to be something that I could leave with him, and if he did break it, it would not be an economic disaster.
But I also wanted to make sure he did not do anything too extreme, while surfing the internet, so I set him up with a Google account as my son, allowing me to control it under Family Link. There was just one problem. As a sixteen year old, he was deemed too old for parental controls.
I had to fudge before I was able to finish the process of enrolling Bow in family link. He now has YouTube for Kids on his tablet, and for the time being this satisfies him.
Meanwhile, Queen, the cockatiel, laid another egg. This time the egg was perfect and not cracked. I had set up a basket for a nest before she laid the second egg, but Queen did not choose to lay her egg in the basket.
When I moved the egg to the basket nest, Queen did not choose to follow the egg there.
I read up on it and found that some cockatiels like more shallow nesting boxes, so I used a tea box that I got from Charla with the bananas, and I padded it with newspaper and put it in the corner where Queen had been trying to nest. I put the egg inside the box. Eventually Queen went back to nest on the egg.
Queen is kind of anxious and leaves the nest frequently, especially when I am looking at her, so I am trying to stay away to give her a chance to do her thing. She may be too old to be a mother, but however old she is, she lacks experience and needs some space to try to figure out what to do.
Yesterday was a big and eventful day. Bow discovered rap music.
It started out like any other day. We have been having icy mornings, with everything covered in sheet of transparent frozen water.
This is not Bow's kind of weather, and no amount of cajoling will get him to leave the warmth of the inner pen.
On days like this, Bow remains in the pen, lying on his blanket and I venture forth to see what is going on outside.
On my way to the front yard I said hello to the two cockatiels and Summer the Quaker parrot. I noticed that the female cockatiel, Queen, was trying to nest, but I did not think much of it. In our backyard, the old mourning dove nest had been covered in ice, like a nest made of diamonds.
In the front yard, every tree and bush and blade of grass was coated with ice.
By noon, however, all that ice was melting and crashing to the ground.
After lunch, I brought the iPhone into the pen with Bow, so he could see what I had seen outside. But he was having none of that. He swiftly located the YouTube app and started surfing for new videos to watch. In no time at all, he had located a rap song and began to groove to it.
It was nothing I had planned on. I was in shock! I could not stop him, and he would not give me back the iPhone until long after the spirit of the song had left him. Luckily, he had a firm grip on the iPhone the whole time he was dancing and swinging on his rope to the beat of the rap song.
Bow is growing up. He needs his own electronic device, I thought, as I was cleaning out the bird cages last night. And then I noticed something unusual in the cockatiel cage. It was an egg. But it was cracked. She must have laid it while on a high perch.
Somehow when I saw her trying to nest, I did not take Queen quite seriously enough. I thought she was just playing at being a mother. I had seen her and King mating the day before, but thought nothing of it. I mean, I considered filming it, but decided that YouTube would not approve, so I didn't. Now I was really sad that she had not had a good enough nest to protect this egg, which was undoubtedly fertilized.
In the two years that I have been taking care of the cockatiels since I took them over from Sword, I have never found an egg in the cage, even though the birds have been active as a couple. I wondered if this was a fluke, or it means that King and Queen are ready to start a family.
Last night I went to Wal*Mart with two things on my shopping list: a tablet for Bow and a nesting box for Queen.
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